08 November 2013

Another Two Bite the Dust

Two south St. Louis parish schools will close after this academic year.

The decision to shutter St. John the Baptist and Immaculate Heart of Mary comes as leaders of nine parishes on the city's south side continue looking at ways to address declining enrollment and rising costs.

The collaborative agreed that all seven other schools involved in the discussions will remain open at least through the 2014-15 school year.

The decision to close the two schools was not a surprise. St. John the Baptist Elementary School raised more than $240,000 in the past year to remain open. And in January, Principal Melissa Langevin of Immaculate Heart of Mary told the Post-Dispatch that the school had just enough finances to remain open for this school year.

In the past 15 years, enrollment at the school dropped to fewer than 150 from nearly 400 students.

Representatives from the two schools slated for closing will remain involved in future meetings "to ensure that the students of their schools have a long-term option for continuing their Catholic education," states a news release from the St. Louis Archdiocese.

Monsignor Michael Turek, pastor at St. Joan of Arc, said discussion among the parish leaders will continue. The group had hoped to have a long-term solution in place by the beginning of 2014.

"We bit off more than we could chew. That was an aggressive timeline to deal with the complexity of the issues," Turek said of the meetings that began about a year ago.

"What we don't want to do is put a Band-Aid on the problem."

[...]

Beyond St. John the Baptist and Immaculate Heart, the other parishes involved in the collaboration include: Our Lady of Sorrows, St. Ambrose, St. James the Greater, St. Margaret of Scotland and St. Raphael the Archangel, St. Joan of Arc and St. Stephen Protomartyr.

In the 2012-13 school year, there were 2,592 students enrolled in elementary schools in the South City Deanery, according to the St. Louis Archdiocese. That is a drop of more than 1,500 students in a decade.

the other parishes involved in the collaboration include: Our Lady of Sorrows, St. Ambrose, St. James the Greater, St. Margaret of Scotland and St. Raphael the Archangel, St. Joan of Arc and St. Stephen Protomartyr.

That's basically every geographical (non-intentional) parish in South St. Louis. I repeat, *South* St. Louis.

I am not actively involved in any way in the collaborative's meetings. From what is being reported back to the parishes, however, it appears that the collaborative's focus is almost entirely on the numbers, i.e. how many buildings can we afford to keep open, how many students can those buildings serve, how many people can we afford to hire.

That's sad. I had high hopes that the collaborative would have spent more time trying to determine why Catholic families don't use the Catholic elementary schools, rather than focusing on accounting issues.

Don't get me wrong, the accounting issues are important, but focusing on those makes the practice more about managing the glide path for the schools than about changing them in some fundamental way to attract more Catholics and even non-Catholics.

As a parent and school board member of a closed school, I can see the thought process as one long timeline. When someone talks about being the 'last one standing' I think back and point to the time when I and my peers said the exact same thing. Then comes hanging on for dear life, trying to stay open just one more year. Then the sickening realization that the debt may wind up closing the whole parish and not just the school. It's easy to lose sight of how we got to this point, and how rebuilding will be the long, slow work of generations. I can't judge too harshly because I walked that path myself.

"I had high hopes that the collaborative would have spent more time trying to determine why Catholic families don't use the Catholic elementary schools."

Are you joking? Every one knows why, you don't need a collaborative, whatever that may be, to tell you;

Step 1)Catholics cease to be Catholic, start using birth control and stop having children.Step 2)The nuns all leave.Step 3)Without the nuns the schools must charge tuition.Step 4) Without the children (due to birth control) the burden falls heavily on those remaining Catholics who don't use birth control.Step 5) The schools cease to be Catholic.Step 6) The few remaining Catholic families leave as they can no longer afford the ever increasing tuition and as they can no longer tolerate subsidizing the children of the nominally catholic and the scandalous loss of faith of their own young.

And there you have it. Sic transit gloria mundi, and Tuesdays even worse.

While I do not disagree with the comments above, many of the issues involved in this have little or nothing to do with Catholicism. The population of South City is a fraction of what it was "back in the day." The housing stock, while adequate by 1950s-60s standards, is not appealing to most of today's families. The largest immigrant group to move into the area is the Bosnian community (Muslims). No matter how faithful a school is to Catholic teachings and traditions, it is hard to maintain enrollment levels when the overall population in the area plummets.

X, you're being flip. Of course, steps 1 through 4 and step 6 are part of the numbers and part of the cause, but those causes are not really anything that the current players in Catholic education have the ability to change.* Let's try to find a solution to today's problem, not dwell on how we got to this point, except to the extent that it animates our thinking on a path forward.

Number 5 is one cause, of course, and a big one, but it's not the only cause.

Here's are a couple of thought provoking questions:

Why are our Catholic high schools in STL attractive to Catholics and non-Catholics alike?

Why are our Catholic high schools in STL considered destination schools that can legitimately charge high price tags, even in bad economic times and still afford to turn interested, but perhaps unqualified students away?

You can't say either of those things about parochial schools.

What's the difference? What are our Catholic high schools doing right that our parochial schools aren't? Or alternatively, what are our parochial schools doing wrong that our Catholic high schools aren't? Or are they just different animals entirely?

Look, I have some opinions here, as one who has tried to use the parochial school system, so yes, I have some observations. In general, I think the parochial schools are not all that different than the public schools, except they (a) aren't as academically rigorous, and (b) cost money out-of-pocket. That's a bad combination. And no, talking about sending pennies to [insert third world country orphans or charitable cause here] isn't a difference, because public schools do those things, too.

* - Yes, theoretically, if our parochial schools had taught the catechism for the past umpty-something years, Catholics might be contracepting less. Theoretically. But let's not pretend that there is a quick fix to that huge underlying problem.

"I guess I'm going to be barbecue this day." Brer Rabbit sighed. "But getting barbecued is a whole lot better than getting thrown in the briar patch." He sighed again. "No doubt about it. Getting barbecued is almost a blessing compared to being thrown in that briar patch on the other side of the road. If you got to go, go in a barbecue sauce. That's what I always say. How much lemon juice and brown sugar you put in yours?"

How many Catholics live in South Saint Louis nowadays? And what is the difference between a "parochial" school and a Catholic high school? I sometimes wonder if the primary difference nowadays between Catholic schools and secular schools is that the former have crucifixes in the classrooms?

Few of the Catholic high schools are considered destination schools and these schools with the robust enrollment are those that tend to be located in more affluent areas and hold students to the highest academic standards.St. Elizabeth Academy was located in a working-class city neighborhood and did not stress academics. Notre Dame High School located in Lemay is barely surviving, its enrollment is quite low. St. Mary's future is bleak. Ursuline, Vianney, DeSmet are second-choice schools. SLUH, located in the city, has a wealthy alumni and has invested in its infrastructure & technology. Same can be said with Priory & Cor Jesu. Graduates of these schools tend to move onto Ivy League universities.

A Day That Will Live in Glory

Pray for the Four Cardinals: Burke, Caffarra, Meiser and Brandmuller

“You are the ones who are happy; you who remain within the Church by your Faith, who hold firmly to the foundations of the Faith which has come down to you from Apostolic Tradition. And if an execrable jealousy has tried to shake it on a number of occasions, it has not succeeded. They are the ones who have broken away from it in the present crisis. No one, ever, will prevail against your Faith, beloved Brothers. And we believe that God will give us our churches back some day."